


How High the Moon

by SianShanya



Series: Moonlight Serenade 'Verse [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Character Study, Deleted Scenes, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Introspection, Kinda Stucky a Little Bit, M/M, Multiple Points of View, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Steve Rogers is a little shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9917948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SianShanya/pseuds/SianShanya
Summary: Deleted and Alternate Scenes from the "Moonlight Serenade" 'Verse. Basically just an excuse to write fluff and introspective character studies that don't fit in the Plot.





	1. Like Real People Do

**Author's Note:**

> Exactly what it says on the tin. A collection of deleted scenes that messed up my pacing in the actual story, but are still cute and/or interesting. Here be fluff, character studies, introspection, and feelings.
> 
> Chapter 1: The first morning in New York, at Steve's place

Steve’s internal clock wakes him up around six, like always. Sam’s still snoring, wrapped up in literally all of Steve’s quilt like a burrito. Steve takes a quick picture, for blackmail purposes, and then does his Army push up routine. After a quick shower and change of clothes, he ventures into the living room, not entirely sure what to expect. 

It’s pretty cute, actually. 

Wanda’s curled up on one end of the couch, the blanket he’d given Bucky tucked around her. Buck himself is wide awake, stretched out with his back in the other corner of the couch and his bare feet on Steve’s coffee table. He nods at Steve as he comes in. “Hey.” 

“Morning,” murmurs Steve, making his way to the kitchen. He sets up the very fancy coffee maker Tony got him for Christmas after seeing the ‘affront to modernity’ that was Steve’s percolator. He has to admit; it makes damn good coffee. Just before it’s done brewing, there’s rustling and groaning from his bedroom that means Sam’s awake. He turns to switch off the coffee maker before it can beep, but Bucky’s beaten him to it. Steve very manfully doesn't jump a foot in the air. He hadn’t even heard Buck get up. 

Two minutes later, when Sam comes stumbling in, Bucky’s got a cup of coffee clutched in his hands, and is making no secret of breathing the steam in apparent ecstasy. Steve grins.

“Caffeine hound.” he says, fond. Bucky snorts.

“Sure, Rogers. D-deny me my one vice. Can’t get drunk anymore, never could smoke like all the local boys, and now you make fun of me for likin’ coffee. You see what I deal with?” That last bit is directed at Wanda, who is blinking sleepily over the back of Steve’s couch, her dark hair mussed. She cracks a smile at Bucky’s words, and joins them in the kitchen. 

“Hey, Wanda, J.B,” says Sam, looking over from the cabinet he’s rummaging through.

“Tea’s in the one over the stove, Sam.” says Steve, taking pity on him. Then, noticing Wanda’s very interested expression, adds, “You like tea?” She nods, enthusiastic, and so Sam pulls down two bags and sets to boiling water. 

Another ten minutes has Pietro up and nursing a glass of orange juice, and Sam deems it acceptable to make breakfast. Steve’s out of pancake mix, but between the two of them, they manage eggs, bacon, and toast in short order. Breakfast is a quiet affair, the twins are busy eating, and Bucky’s still having a moment with his coffee. Steve checks his phone and finds three texts, one from Bruce, asking him to come by the lab later, to which he answers in the affirmative, and two from Natasha, reading,

_No casualties so far, other than Rhodes’ liver._

_How are things at yours? Need an extraction? :)_

He taps out an answer while he drinks his own coffee.

 _Good to hear. Only casualty here is my kitchen. No extraction required._

She sends back a smiling emoji.

Once the breakfast dishes are washed, courtesy of Buck, and put away, courtesy of the twins, Sam offers to show the two of them around Brooklyn and take them shopping. Wanda nods, but Pietro shakes his head, a mulish look in his brown eyes.

“What about Yasha?” At the mention of his name, Bucky looks over from Steve’s living room. He’s in the middle of some kind of gymnastics sequence that’s making Steve’s joints hurt in sympathy, but when he speaks, his voice is practically strain-free. 

“Me in an enclosed space with a lot of civilians is probably not a great idea right now. P-past couple of days have been kinda rough on my startle reflex. But nobody’s gonna make you do anything you’re not comfortable with.” He bends over backwards, and kicks his feet up into a handstand. “Anyone who wants to try can go through me.” Sam’s hands go up, palms out.

“No way, if ya’ll don’t want to come, then don’t. But you’re probably gonna want some clothes at some point, right?” At that, Wanda levels a glare at her twin, and fires off in what is maybe Sokovian. Doesn’t match the cadence of Russian quite right. Pietro answers with a question, to which Wanda nods firmly, and points to both Steve and Sam in quick succession. 

“Okay,” says Pietro, switching back to English. “If you are sure.” And they go, easy as that.

“She call the shots?” asks Steve once the door’s shut. Bucky, now back on his feet and strapping his various knives back onto his body, hums in the affirmative. 

“With things like that, yeah. She’s telepathic. Got a good handle on who to trust.” God, Steve can’t imagine how uncomfortable that must make Buck. 

“You alright with that?” Bucky shrugs.

“She didn’t ask for it, and she can’t help it. If she can be okay with my shit, I can be okay with hers.” Steve raises an eyebrow, and Bucky sighs. “You’re obnoxious, you know. Yes, she makes me nervous. She scares me, that’s why I called you in the first place, but I’m dealing with it.” He tugs the leg of his pants back down over the last of the knives and collapses gracefully onto the couch, eyes slipping shut, fingers of his right hand coming to the bridge of his nose. 

“Headache?” asks Steve, and Bucky just nods, eyes still closed.

“Not used to so much noise.” He snorts, bitter, and adds, “Or so many threats to keep track of.” 

“Will I make it worse if I come over there?” Bucky exhales through his nose, almost a laugh.

“Naw, Stevie, I’m used to your big ugly mug. C’mere.” Steve hides his grin in his second cup coffee and follows orders. He bought this particular couch at Pepper’s suggestion; it’s massive, easily big enough for the both of them, so he can sit next to Buck without getting in his personal space too much. They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and then Bucky cracks one eye open.

“Do people not-not touch anymore? Guys, I mean.” Taken aback, Steve shrugs.

“I’m not really sure, Buck. I mean, Sam doesn’t seem to have a problem with it, but he’s a real laid back guy. And he doesn’t really-I mean, you used to be able to put an arm around a guy, or sit real close and-I guess no, nobody really does that anymore.” He’s never really noticed before. After all, Steve’s doesn’t really have anyone he’s close enough to, to be comfortable like that. “It’s kinda weird, now that I think about it.” Bucky doesn’t answer, just gives a little grunt to let Steve know he was listening, but a minute later, without actually appearing to consciously move, Bucky’s shifted over so their legs press together, hip to knee, and he’s leaning, ever so slightly, against Steve’s side. And if he’s not totally relaxed, he’s not tense, either, and Steve marks ‘touching’ in the ‘things that are okay’ column of his mental file on Bucky. 

He’ll panic about what that means re. How He’s Been Head Over Heels in Love with Bucky Barnes since 1938 later, but for now, he just lets it be, and thinks of Colonel Phillips every time Bucky’s thigh flexes against his.


	2. Forgive and Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pietro and Wanda's first day in New York. Featuring Sam, cookies, Netflix, and angst.

Pietro likes New York. The city is alive around them, him and Wanda and Sam Wilson, and while it doesn’t move as fast as he can, it’s faster than anywhere else he’s ever been. 

He also likes Steve. Steve, who was first safe because Yasha said he was, and then safe because Wanda likes him, and Wanda always, always, knows which of the guards feels bad for them and which ones to never even look at. Wanda thinks Sam is okay, too, and that’s enough for Pietro. But he also really _likes_ Steve. He’s funny, and he’d answered every one of Pietro’s questions about the jet without getting annoyed. Which is nice, and not something Wanda does. And while Yasha is the one who’d saved them, and bought them their first meal that wasn’t tasteless and designed to ‘maximize their bodies’ efficiency,’ he’s also broken like they are, and too much talking makes him twitchy. 

And, for a guy that wears the American Flag on national TV sometimes, Steve is pretty anti-capitalist, which is a thing Pietro finds both hilarious and really comforting.

Sam shows them around Brooklyn, takes them to a few stores. Pietro picks his most of his stuff out from a sports store, it’s all soft and stretchy and when he sprints through an empty alleyway afterwards, it moves with him. 

“Damn,” comments Sam, when he zips back to them. “I guess you weren’t kidding about being fast, huh?” 

“It’s okay,” he says, grinning. “I don’t expect you to keep up.” Sam laughs. 

“Don’t worry, I prefer flying.” And that’s right, Yasha had said Sam had wings. They must be detachable though, there’s no way wings would fit under his t shirt. 

Wanda likes the secondhand shop a few blocks over from the sports store. He’s the one who finds the red leather jacket hanging between two hideous dresses. She lights up when he tosses it to her, and she hasn’t taken it off since. 

Once they both have clothes, Sam drags them to a grocery store.

“Trust me,” he says, tipping flour and milk and eggs into a basket. “My mom’s cookies are the greatest invention of the modern age.”

“You have mother?” asks Wanda, a little shy. 

Sam grins. “Yeah, she lives over in the Bronx. I’ll have to introduce you sometime, she’s always looking to adopt more of my friends.” 

“Our mother is dead.” murmurs Wanda. Pietro growls. He likes Steve, and he trusts Yasha, but it doesn’t change the fact that he and Wanda had crouched in the rubble of their home for two days with Stark Industries staring them down, promising death. Objectively, he knows the fault is with the men who’d shot the shells, not the ones who’d invented them. Still, he’s very glad that they’re staying with Steve, not at the big ugly tower that belongs to Tony Stark. Besides, Stark had tried to hit Yasha yesterday.

Sam nods, understanding, and tells them about his friend Riley as they walk back to Steve’s apartment. He knows what it’s like to lose someone in a flash of light and sound, with nothing left behind to even mourn. Pietro decides he likes Sam, too. 

Neither Yasha nor Steve are there when they get back, but Sam has a text on his phone from each of them. Steve’s meeting someone called Bruce, and Yasha is ‘fine’ and that’s as much as they get. Wanda hates cooking and always has, but Pietro helps Sam make his cookies while she folds their new clothes and sticks them in the dresser. 

Steve gets back just as the cookies are coming out of the oven, and his face lights up so hard Pietro laughs.

“Are those-“ 

“Yes, Steve, these are Mom’s recipe. And no, you still can’t have it, it’s a family secret.” And he winks at Pietro. 

Yasha comes back within five minutes of Steve, and Pietro wonders if he’s been waiting. He’d explained to them, as they crouched among delivery boxes in the back of a semi-truck somewhere in Slovakia, about how Hydra made him a weapon like they tried to do to Pietro and Wanda. And, like Pietro can’t always stop himself from moving too fast, Yasha can’t always control his own head, and Steve is one of the only people in the world that’s strong enough to stop him. 

When the cookies are gone, Steve puts Netflix on his TV, and they watch _The Lion King,_ which is what Wanda picks because it’s her favorite. Pietro, who hates Disney on principle, spends the whole time flicking popcorn at his sister. She catches most of it with her powers, and sends it shooting right back at him. But she’s smiling at the movie and at him, and it’s as happy as she’s been since they were fucking ten and that makes him happy, too.

Pietro can’t sleep that night. The whole day, he’s had things to think about, things to do, and now, in the dark with Wanda asleep next to him, there’s nothing to distract him from his head. All he can see when he closes his eyes is the blue light from the gemstone in the scepter, all he can hear are the scientists, congratulating each other as Wanda clamps her hands over her ears and begs for quiet, as he crashes into walls every time he tries to move his limbs. 

_They’re dead now._ That’s what he tells himself, over and over. They’re dead. Yasha killed them. He and Wanda are safe. Hydra will never touch them again, so it’s okay that Pietro convinced her to volunteer with him, that all of this is his fault.

Maybe tomorrow, he’ll be able to make himself believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did Wanda in the actual MCU know about good Paprikash because of Pietro? I'll never tell. (But yes.)  
> Please love me. Preferably in the form of comments


	3. This Isn't Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Party and the ensuing fight, from Bucky's point of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one actually adds something to the big fic, but it didn't want to work with everything else, so Natasha got this scene instead. But I still really like this so here, read it if you're interested.

Tony hadn’t been lying about the sniper’s roosts. There are a lot, and they all have excellent visibility, so Bucky’s been shifting around from ledge to ledge, watching Steve and the twins socialize and only panicking a little every time a swell tries to shake Steve’s hand. He’s pretty sure it’s not a normal way to pass a few hours, but his muscles are nice and loose from swinging between I-beams, and his paranoia likes being able to see the whole room at once.

All in all, it’s been a nice evening. Steve is pretty obviously relaxed, whether he’s pretending to lose at pool or taking care of his team. He’s the leader in more ways than one here. Back in the War, he’d been the Captain and his orders reigned supreme in the field. Bucky had been the Sergeant, the one who told them to go to bed and take care of themselves, kept them all in high spirits with a joke or a crack shot. Now, here, Steve is both. He’s Mom and Dad, and while the whole pack of them, with the possible exception of Tony, is well aware they’re being handled, they seem happy to let it happen. 

And Steve is happy too; responsibility rests easy on his broad shoulders and his team trusts the shit out of him, it’s obvious in their every interaction. He’s everything he was meant to be, everything he signed up to be. It’s beautiful, but it also makes Bucky think about the contrast. Steve is everything a soldier and a good man ought to be. Bucky is-well, on his better days he’s almost all the way to being an actual human being. On his worse days, he’s caught somewhere between a ghost and a fuckin’ Panzer tank, which is as improbable as it sounds. And if Bucky had any decency, he’d have stayed in Europe, doing the only thing he’s actually good at anymore instead of making Steve’s life harder than it already is. 

Unfortunately, one thing no one’s ever accused James Buchanan Barnes of being is decent.

He’s sitting in the shadow of one of the big supporting beams in the corner now, back braced against the solid steel and one foot hanging off, forearm laying across his knee. It’s a nice compromise between being comfortable and being able to move if he needs to. It’s just the Avengers and their inner circle below, sprawled across couches and floor, relaxed now that the VIPs and guests are gone. He’s just about decided to climb down and go be a person for a while when he sees the glint of the Tower’s lights off of metal outside. At this height, it’s not a commercial aircraft, and that leaves very few alternatives, all of which are potentially deadly. There’s no choice involved, here, only imminent danger to Steve and the twins and Sam. The drop to the ground isn’t long, only about 25 feet, Bucky pushes off the beam and rolls forward into empty air, hands going to the SIG Sauers strapped to his thighs. 

**

The Winter Soldier lands among the oblivious people below. Before any of them have time to react to his presence in their midst, the drones smash through the windows, and the room explodes into chaos. 

Conditions are far from ideal; everyone in the room is potential collateral, and collateral damage has been outside his operating parameters for nearly a year now. Still, the Soldier likes a challenge. His bullets ricochet off armor-unacceptable-so he holsters his guns. Hand to hand it is. He catalogues them in the space of a second, because he’s good like that. Relatively small, vaguely humanoid, four limbs and a head, though they have no faces, only blank metal. Main threat: blades along the limbs. Potential weakness: join between the head and body. He draws a long combat knife and lunges for the nearest one, even as they scatter throughout the room, hovering anywhere between two and sixteen feet off the ground. 

Shots ring out as he grabs one by its leg; the little Widow, she’s covering the Hulk. The Soldier jams his knife into the red glow between the drone’s head and body. Light’s hot, hot enough to trigger his left arm’s sensors, but the knife finds its mark, and the thing drops, spitting sparks. He grins, wolfish, and goes for the other that’s stupid enough to hover within his reach. As he lunges, the Captain is slammed into a wall in a cascade of dust and broken tile. The blow knocks his grip on the drone loose and he falls through a barstool in a shower of broken glass. The Soldier doesn’t spare attention, other than to see that his neck isn’t broken. 

Collateral damage is outside his parameters. Captain America getting killed on his watch is on another goddamn plane. It is a thing that will not happen, whatever he has to do. 

It’s-odd, fighting alongside allies. Not something he’s used to. At one point, he has to pull a punch because if he hits the drone as hard as his instincts tell him to, it will break Wilson’s ribs when it flies into him. And it’s not that he actually cares; in a fight, the only thing that matters is operational efficiency, he’s had that lesson carved into him more times than he can remember. Literally. But he does have, somewhere deep and probably more Soviet Union than Hydra, a sense of camaraderie, the sense that he’d maybe had mission support that wasn’t solely cannon-fodder before. It’s been a long time, though, since he was supposed to worry about anyone in his general vicinity getting caught up in the crossfire. 

But when the drone targets Wanda and no energy flickers across her hands to defend her, it’s not operational efficiency that makes him move so fast. It’s-well, the Soldier doesn’t know what, but he thinks of bricks and bruised, bloody knuckles and a scrawny little asshole with a blackening eye. And that thought throws him off, just a bit, just enough so he blocks the thing’s slash with the wrong arm and metal bites into his flesh, ice cold and scraping along bone. The drone makes a high-pitched whirring noise of victory, because it expects him to _care._ That’s funny, funny enough he laughs, because the Winter Soldier is a weapon, not a person. Weapons don’t feel pain, don’t give a shit about a little wear and tear. 

He works fast, pinning the drone’s bladed leg flat to the ground with his foot. He digs his metal fingers into the glowing space between head and neck, where its brain stem would be, if it had one. The plates in his arm shift, locking down and rigid, and he rips the drone’s head clean off in a shower of sparks. It doesn’t get an easy death, the light gutters and spits as it fades, and the Soldier smiles. It wasn’t an efficient kill, but Wanda is still breathing and unhurt where she kneels a couple of feet behind him, and the thing that tried to hurt her is in pieces on the floor at his feet, so all’s well that ends well. 

The drones are gone now, the last of them falling to the magic hammer. All that’s left is the hum of the building, and eleven heartbeats, all elevated. Threat assessments are still high though, across the board. He’s got six points of egress, if he lands a hit on any of them, it’ll be enough of a distraction to get to the closest, but dammit, he hates leaving witnesses, it’s sloppy and secrecy is essential to mission effectiveness and they’re all armed and all threats, he needs to neutralize-

_No. Nonono, Soldier, stoppit._

Target-The Wid-Natal-Natasha- _Natashenka, the little dancer, you know her, Soldier_ -is moving toward him, coming up from his right side. He snaps around to look at her, left hand going automatically to his gun. She’s got her own-safety off, pointed steadily at the ground-drawn, green eyes wide, straddling the edge between concerned and afraid. She’s too close, too fucking close, too dangerous, a threat, a target- _No, no, she’s Natashenka, the little dancer, you taught her to protect herself._ He forces his eyes shut. 

“Don’t touch me,” he grits out, more of a warning than a command. If she touches him, he’ll kill her. 

“You’re safe,” she murmurs, and he clings to her words like a rock in a flood, because he wants, so badly, to believe her. “You know me, Yakov, my name’s-” Yasha. His name is Yasha and it’s James Buchanan Barnes and it’s Bucky, and motherfucker, he is more than a goddamn fight computer, fucking _stoppit._

“Natalia.” Bucky finishes, dragging his eyes open again. Natasha relaxes, visibly, and puts her gun away.

The static in his head eases up a little, and pain, a sharp, fiery line from his elbow to his wrist, trickles into the gap where it was. His jaw goes tight, and his left hand comes away from the gun in favor of putting pressure on his forearm, because he’s bleeding all over his sleeve and Tony’s floor.

 _At ease, Soldier, you’re done here._

Unfortunately, the Winter Soldier isn’t a coat he can shrug on and off, isn’t even a separate thing from Bucky. It’s what he is when he doesn’t have enough attention to spend on being a person, when he has to let go of his humanity in order to get anything done. The Soldier is Bucky on a bad day, halfway between a ghost and a tank, focused on his mission, whatever that might be, and determined to survive. All of the skills, all the technical knowledge, none of the complicated human shit like fear and pain and regret. It’s a headspace, a set of instincts that run the show when they think they need to. Sometimes, a lot of the time, they’re right. 

They’re wrong a lot too, though. Or, not wrong, maybe, but they miss where he really, really, needs to be a person, too. Like right now, standing in the wreckage of his first fight alongside real allies since 1945. 

“Jesus, Bucky!” yelps Steve. Speaking of allies. “Let me see that,” Natasha jerks, a prelude to stopping him, but Bucky holds out his arm, makes himself be still and not flinch away when Steve’s fingers trace along the ragged slash, trembling. He’s okay. 

Alright, he’ll _be_ okay, quit laughing. 

“It’s not so bad.” he mutters. Steve looks at him in disbelief, and Bucky amends himself. “Okay, it looks worse than it is.” Needs stitches, though. God, he hopes someone knows how to sew. He can, and has, stitched himself up on multiple occasions, but it’s not fun. 

Improbably, it’s Dr. Banner who knows. Well, and Steve, but Steve’s hands are still shaking because he’s a sap. It takes him nearly ten minutes to decide the increase in paranoia that comes from letting Banner, a man with both ‘Dr.’ in front of his name and the potential, however small, to turn into an enormous, bulletproof entity of rage, touch him is better than having to sew his own arm up with his left hand. In the end, it’s the grooves in his fingers that tips the scale. The thread will inevitably get stuck, and it’ll take fucking _ages_ to clean the damn thing as it is, what with all the blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like comments a lot okay, please they make my day :)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, pls. They validate my existence.


End file.
